Talk:Marine World/Africa U.S.A., California

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much of this article is utter nonsense. the park opened as marine world in 1968, it did not start as africa USA then 'merge' with marine world. there's no evidence that daktari was ever shot there, nor any star trek episodes. sorry, but the article is too broken for me to fix, maybe someone who has time and a clue can actually make it right. Anastrophe 03:41, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

  • This is obviously verifiable. Just google Daktari and Africa USA and you will find lots of references. And by the way, in real life, Judy, the "star" of Daktari, was owned by Ralph Helfer, the creator of Africa, USA. Hektor 18:39, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
unless you can provide a link to a verifiable source - not one that ultimately returns back to this article - all this other stuff unsourced, and i have removed it. i googled and googled and googled - and all the references either returned here eventually, or were to dead ends that provided no source (like the IMDB page that lists it as a shooting location for daktari - the entry is user-provided with no source, and likely they got the idea from this article again! Anastrophe 18:44, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
      • This is user provided ?
that only bolsters the facts as i've presented them. marine world/africa usa is in northern california, not southern california. it is 400 miles away from the afica usa site that page references. Anastrophe 18:49, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
furthermore, the site you references states that africa usa was created by Ralph Helfner, not Ivan Tors as the former version of this article incorrectly states! Anastrophe 18:52, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I have reworked the article to conform to verifiable facts, as found at http://www.rcpl.info/services/redwoodshorehistory.html that information was compiled by the Redwood City Public Library from their own local history collection. I am not referencing my own experience - as that would be Original Research - but the fact of the matter is that I was born in redwood city, and visited marine world three months after it first opened. most of the former article was erroneous. Anastrophe 18:54, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

  • The park was created by Ivan Tors and Ralph Helfer near Los Angeles, and this was the shooting location of Daktari [1]

Obviously I now understand there have been two successive Africa USA parks in California, one near Los Angeles where Daktari was shot, and the second one north of California. Daktari was not shot in Mozambique.Hektor 19:01, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

excellent, thanks for the acknowledgement. i'll happily concede that the show may not have been shot in mozambique, although the liner notes seem to be a reasonably reliable source. perhaps it was shot in both locations?? Anastrophe 19:02, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

The first Africa USA park seems to have been located in Soledad Canyon according to this source. My information is that the actors where based in California, and that the scenes with actors where shot there, and shots of animals in African landscape where shot in Africa, possibly in Mozambique, and put inbetween the actors scene. The interior scenes where shot in Florida. You have an indication in the bio of Marshall Thompson. http://www.marshall-thompson.com/biography/lifetimestory.htm

There was one incident that almost cost him his life. The scene called for him to be in a pit with a leopard. Shot in the San Fernando Valley near Ventura, the animals, actors and crew worked in very hot temperatures.

Here is an excellent source. I think it explains it all... So there were two parks... the first Africa USA where Daktari and many others were shot and a second one in Redwood Shores... Hektor 19:14, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

nicely done job reworking the article. i'm not certain if the format is within wikipedia standards, since the article describes two completely different parks now. however, at least the historical data is closer to being truly accurate, which to my mind is the most important factor. Anastrophe 20:17, 8 May 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Merge

I am thinking about merging this entire article to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom#History. The content is basically redundant. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 03:02, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

  • Oppose - these are historically three different and successive locations, I don't think the content is redundant, especially the one about the original animal affection training facility. The section in the Six Flags article can refer to this article. I think this is better this way. Hektor 14:27, 19 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Weak Oppose - for same reason as Hektor, but I do feel the History section overpowers the rest of the article. It should be moved further down in the article, imo. Fcsuper 16:19, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, for now it will be treated as a more detailed sub-article of Six Flags Discovery Kingdom. Zzyzx11 (Talk) 05:02, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Soledad Canyon

The thing that sticks out to me is that it says all of the animals died during the flood in Soledad Canyon, when in both "Beauty of the Beasts" and "Zamba", written by Ralph Helfer, he says ultimately only 9 animals died and the rest were all eventually recovered. I'd like to change this, but first know if anybody has evidence that supports what is currently up there before I do. The original facility he had was near Thousand Oaks in the Santa Monica Mountains, then he moved to the one in Soledad Canyon. I'm unsure of the dates, only that this happened between the 1950's and 1960's. I'm unsure if the original facility in Thousands Oaks was Africa USA, he just refers to it as the "ranch", where his affectionate training facility chain started. Not sure it's worth the mention in this particular article though. Otherwise, good on the Africa USA end. --Zen (talk) 03:29, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

it would be good to find a reliable source that actually documents this; are 'beauty and the beasts' and 'zamba' books, films, articles? if you can provide quotes and cite them to the original material, that would be acceptable. the current material is unsourced, so anything citable would be an improvement. Anastrophe (talk) 03:35, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

  • Both are books, based on the true life of Ralph and the animals he worked with. I'll get on it. --Zen (talk) 03:52, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

In January of 1969, Africa USA would take a turn for the worse. A powerful storm materialized over Soledad Canyon and dropped large amounts of rainfall in the region. This resulted in severe flooding and mudslides in the canyons. The phone rang at the Helfer residence at 6:00 A.M. They were being notified of the storm and drove out to the ranch in a fruitless attempt to save the animals.
They were driving up Soledad Canyon Road and it was being washed out from the heavy rains. By the time they got in the ranch, most of their animals had been killed by the torrential flooding. The so-called 100-year flood devastated Soledad Canyon. Two years before, the Helfers had a flood channel installed for $75,000 that was said to protect the ranch from any flooding. It was approved by the county. Ironically, it couldn't stop the flooding of the property.